The European Commission has called time on the Charlie McCreevy-era of packing top-level European bank-regulation advisory panels with the bankers they are meant to regulate, the Brussels newspaper EU Observer has reported.

The EU's internal market commissioner Michel Barnier, who took over from McCreevy earlier this year, said he would move against the dominating influence of the financial sector on the expert groups that will frame pending financial regulation by the EU.

Barnier, an appointee of French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who favours greater regulation of banks and hedge funds, said the expert groups needed to better reflect the interests of consumer groups, trade unions, small businesses, and charity and foundation groups.

The newspaper said that, in 11 of the 25 expert groups advising on financial-regulation policies, a majority of representatives came from the banking industry. The paper said one expert group was so lopsided that it had 62 industry representatives on the panel compared with four from government.

The Sunday Tribune understands that the undue influence of banking representatives remains an issue of conflict in Brussels.

"I remain convinced that more needs to be done to enhance the active participation of civil-society organisations in internal market policymaking in order to fully achieve a fair balance on non-industry stakeholders' representation in our consultation process," Barnier wrote in a letter to lobby watchdog group Alter-EU, the newspaper reported.

The EU Observer said that the expert groups had been criticised by "pro-transparency" organisations for failing to reflect properly the interests of Europeans as opposed to bankers.